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Quantifying the relative importance of competition, predation, and environmental variation for species coexistence

Lauren G. Shoemaker, Allison K. Barner, Leonora S. Bittleston, Ashley I. Teufel
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/797704
Lauren G. Shoemaker
Botany Department, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071
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  • For correspondence: lshoema1@uwyo.edu
Allison K. Barner
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720Department of Biology, Colby College, Waterville, ME, 04901
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  • For correspondence: allison.barner@colby.edu
Leonora S. Bittleston
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, ID, 83725
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Ashley I. Teufel
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 87501Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712
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1 Abstract

Coexistence theory and food web theory are two cornerstones of the longstanding effort to understand how species coexist. Although competition and predation are known to act simultaneously in communities, theory and empirical study of the two processes continue to be developed independently. Here, we integrate modern coexistence theory and food web theory to simultaneously quantify the relative importance of predation, competition, and environmental fluctuations for species coexistence. We first examine coexistence in a classic multi-trophic model, adding complexity to the food web using a novel machine learning approach. We then apply our framework to a parameterized rocky intertidal food web model, partitioning empirical coexistence dynamics. We find that both environmental fluctuation and variation in predation contribute substantially to species coexistence. Unexpectedly, covariation in these two forces tends to destabilize coexistence, leading to new insights about the role of bottom-up versus top-down forces in both theory and the rocky intertidal ecosystem.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 08, 2019.
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Quantifying the relative importance of competition, predation, and environmental variation for species coexistence
Lauren G. Shoemaker, Allison K. Barner, Leonora S. Bittleston, Ashley I. Teufel
bioRxiv 797704; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/797704
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Quantifying the relative importance of competition, predation, and environmental variation for species coexistence
Lauren G. Shoemaker, Allison K. Barner, Leonora S. Bittleston, Ashley I. Teufel
bioRxiv 797704; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/797704

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